The tale of the Cape Cod Bear began on Memorial Day weekend much like it would for any other visitor to our peninsula, with a morning swim.

"Bears are very good swimmers and it could swim across the canal no problem," said Jason Zimmer of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

People may complain that the Cape is overcrowded in the summer but for more than two weeks this peripatetic bear, a 2- to 3-year-old, 180-pound male, explored the golf courses, backyards, woods and even downtowns from Sandwich to Provincetown, avoiding the crowds of media, police and animal control specialists, as well as curious citizens hoping for a glimpse of what is an exceedingly rare sight.

"I couldn't believe it. I had to rub my eyes. That's a bear, not a dog," said Kristina Conaway, who was out jogging out on a Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend when she spotted the black bear in West Barnstable.

As the first bear, possibly since Colonial times, to have made it to the area, the young visitor gathered as much press as it did seed from birdfeeders, accruing a place in the Cape mythos right beside other unique visitors like Dennis the manatee and Gretel the great white shark.

Some expressed fear, others hoped they'd be lucky enough catch a glimpse. Many worried over its fate and thought it should be left alone to join other recent immigrants like coyotes and fisher cats.

"I'd love to see it. Hopefully, it will continue to enjoy the Cape, and no one will hurt it," said Lynn McIntyre at the Taylor-Bray Farm in Yarmouth.

The state's black bear population is growing at about 8 percent per year and was estimated at around 3,000 in 2005. But the Cape is not the place for bears, wildlife experts said. There are too many roads and too many people in a relatively confined area that means too many opportunities for bears to get into trouble.

And so, the ending was predictable, if not anti-climactic. It was spotted crossing a highway in Dennis, then in Brewster near the herring run at Stony Brook. Sightings in Wellfleet, Truro, even an amble down Provincetown's crowded streets followed, always a step ahead of the net and the tranquilizer gun.

As its improbable journey continued, The Cape Cod Bear made the national news and was the topic of conversation in coffee shops, post offices, everywhere. T-shirts popped up. There were rainbow bear stickers. Everyone claimed to have seen it.

"People say they saw him wherever, but I take it with a grain of salt," said Jill Vaughn of Provincetown. "Everyone is talking about it. My mom is calling from Florida to find out the latest on the bear because she has seen it on Diane Sawyer."

The bear was good for tourism, town officials proclaimed.

"Everyone likes to root for the underdog," said Steve Karras of West Yarmouth, whose company produced a "Cape Clawed" T-shirt.

Obvious bear puns ensued once it reached Provincetown, but wildlife officials fearing it had run out of room to roam, deployed large metal bear trap cages baited with a Yogi favorite, doughnuts. To the delight of some, the bear simply left town and seemed headed back to the canal when it was cornered in Wellfleet, sedated and shipped off Cape.

That should have been the curtain call, and people would have moved on to coyotes, sharks and seals, but this bear couldn't let fame slip through his paws so easily.

In June, he was spotted in the Chestnut Hill section of Brookline, shot again with a tranquilizer dart. People were upset when our bear took a long fall out of a tree as a result. But he left behind a legacy, if only on the Internet, where a recent search produced more than 200,000 hits for the Cape Cod Bear, 61,200 for the Cape Cod shark attack and 29,200 for Taylor Swift on Cape Cod.